Instant capacity (iCAP) purchasing of high-end computers provides customers flexibility to acquire high capacity computer systems without imposing the normal single large capital investment. Specifically, an iCAP customer only pays for active central processing units (CPUs) in a given system (plus maintenance fees) while a number of CPUs remain inactive. As the customer's computing requirements increase with time, the customer may activate one or several of the previously inactive CPUs. After activation, the customer is charged for the newly activated CPUs. Accordingly, an iCAP customer is able to flexibly scale the system's computing power as the customer's needs change.